The Vacant House
by mf32
Summary: Jane and John Watson team up to try and find who is leaving dead bodies in empty houses...


The Vacant House

By mf32

Canon characters: John Watson, Lestrade, Billy

Disclaimer: Freely adapted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and from "The Conspiracy of One" by Edward H. Hurlbut, in "Lanagan, Amateur Detective" (retrieved from Project Gutenberg), both in the public domain.

Warnings: A body or two, as to be expected.

A/N: Narrated by Miss Jane Watson. Post-Reichenbach, Pre-Return. Crime/mystery. Many thanks to my wonderful husband and beta, Tim. For Miss Jane's earlier history, see my stories "A Small Adventure," "The Criminal Face," and "Whither Thou Goest".

Please read and review! Thank you!

It was an inauspicious day for an adventure. It felt irritatingly ordinary. My beautiful tortoise-shell friend Cassandra had been up all night caterwauling in a most Rossini-esque manner with a stray calico feline we had named MarySue. They woke me up, and presumably my brother John, two rooms away, with their yowling in the back garden.

That morning, John and I were on each others nerves. It is a hard thing to set up house together at the best of times, and doubly so when one person has been in the residence for a while, and has had things one's own way. John complained about my choice of breakfast and grumbled about ladies hankies all over the place. I, for my part, glared at him tight-jawed and silent, the tense quiet broken by my frustrated mangling of the morning newspaper. I deviously entertained thoughts of putting frogs in his bed, or something equally horrible.

No doubt these spats will pass. We are, after all, adults. But for the moment, it is as if we were two children again, battling over nursery turf.

While fiercely grinding my muesli to pulp between my molars, I noticed a familiar name in a newspaper article. A Mr. Josiah Waters, a telegraph repairman from Brixton Road had proven himself a hero by once again discovering a body in a vacant house. The corpse belonged to a Mr. Ratti, an Italian import merchant, who was clubbed to death. As before, Mr. Waters had been up a telegraph pole, executing his repairs, when he happened to glance in the window of a run-down, empty row house and saw the inert body lying on the sitting room floor.

This event was made all the more remarkable by the fact that this was the second corpse that Mr. Waters had found in this way. He had found his first about three months past and had so enjoyed the notoriety it brought him that he had begun to show signs of a mania for telegraph pole climbing. He had been the subject of further news articles with his peering into homes, and had become well-known to the amused local police.

I knew his wife from a small practice I keep for patients of lesser means at the local church, twice a week. I had met him also, when Mrs. Waters had brought him in last week for sleeplessness.

He had looked like fame was getting to him. He was middle-aged, perhaps suffering from that change of life that some men reputedly have at this age, needing to feel a sense of achievement that had been lacking heretofore in their lives. He was thin and wiry from climbing telegraph poles all day, and was somewhat nervous. I wondered if his nervousness was caused by too much exposure to electricity. He

had twitched his way through his examination, confusing my attempts at testing his reflexes more than once (well, he was certainly not dead!).

I prescribed him a little brandy and a couple of aspirins before bed, and hadn't heard from the couple since, so I assumed that the problem was solved. But I wondered how much worse Mr. Waters' condition would become, now that fame had fingered him once again.

I read further in the newspaper article that a Mr. Bernard Tosca had been arrested for the murder of Mr. Ratti. Mr. Tosca was thought to be a member of a counterfeiting gang; and the police surmised that the gang had been blackmailing poor Mr. Ratti. Mysterious persons, suspected of being in the counterfeiting gang, had been seen talking to the deceased on the day of his disappearance.

As John passed through the sitting room, smoothing his blond hair and adjusting his collar as he went out the door, I mentioned the story to him. He merely harrumphed at first, but stopped, and after a pause said, "Funny, that doesn't sound like them,"

I looked at him curiously, but no more information was forthcoming. A brusque "Good morning," and he was gone.

As the air settled, I began again to feel the heavy stillness that had become the norm. I began musing on how drastically my life had changed recently. I had experienced the loss of one good friendship and the regaining of another (albeit a little rocky yet). It seemed an age since the Mr. Holmes I remember had sat hunched, feet up, in the armchair by the fireplace just one floor down from where I sat now, curling up as if trying to feel the warmth of the womb, only to spring from his seat and swoop across the room to some hapless prey, be it a trembling missive or a dangerous wrongdoer, broken and confessing to the most heinous crime. Holmes' eyes would gleam, his dark, well-oiled hair shining in the lamplight. He had been unfailingly gracious and kind, even in the most stressful of times.

I caught myself sinking into a depressed state of apathy, but then felt a jolt that brought me back to the present. No, this won't do, I thought to myself. I did my own version of springing into action and rose, brushing sentimental thoughts from my mind, and stolidly continued my preparations for the day ahead.

I was at my own little women's and children's medical practice that day, and was surprised to see that John knew my schedule, as he suddenly appeared in my tiny waiting room at about noon.

"Care for a bit of lunch?" he asked casually.

"Absolutely!" I exclaimed, eager to smooth over the ruffles of the morning, and also hoping to coax a bit more information out of him about how he knew so much about the ways and means of counterfeiting gangs. I saw the remaining waiting patient, and I put the "out to lunch" sign on the door, locked it, and off we went together. John took me a little out of our neighborhood, to the Saffron Hill area, London's Latin Quarter, to a modest Italian bistro, with a bar in the front room, a curtained dining room behind it, and a small alcove with a piano behind that. The windowless dining room was filled with small round tables covered with red checked tablecloths and adorned with half melted candles in squat, basket covered wine bottles.

We sat down at a little table, and I noticed that John had pulled the curtains somewhat shut, leaving himself an unobstructed view of the lunch-time patrons talking and laughing in Italian. I scooted around the table so I could at least partially share his view.

After we had been there but a few minutes, we saw two local policemen enter and try to question the bartender and guests, but of course, no one spoke English. Frustrated, they left. John and I heard the name "Ratti" mentioned before (and after) the constables exited, but we could make out little else.

Not long after that, we saw Detective Inspector Lestrade enter the little establishment. It was quite a hotspot that John had chosen for our repast! He peeked into the dining room, and, seeing John and myself, sauntered over to have a few words with us. I was not surprised that he was willing to broach

the topic of the Ratti case with John. Oh well, I thought, might as well get in on things in any way I can.

"What brings you here?" asked John convivially.

"You know the two rules of our department?" asked Lestrade.

"No, replied John, "what are they?"

"Guard the Queen and turn up counterfeiters," said Lestrade, with a pointed look at my brother. He continued, "The secret service man loses his job who talks; but I don't mind taking a chance with you and telling you in confidence that in this particular case I'm not guarding the Queen, being as she is, you know, off on the Isle of Wight this time of year."

"You haven't been sampling any, er, salami lately, have you?" John said with a sidelong glance at Lestrade.

Lestrade laughed, "You sure are a clever one at that. No. I haven't come across any that suited my palate." He left us then, chuckling to himself.

I turned to John. "Salami?" I asked. He looked pleased with himself, but not so much that he would not share the joke.

"The counterfeiting gang that Lestrade is 'not' pursuing - "

"The one who they say killed Mr. Ratti?" I excitedly interposed.

"Yes," he said, with a slightly exasperated look, "they smuggle counterfeit twenty pound bank notes into the country rolled up in salami sausages."

"No, really!" I exclaimed, amazed at the boundless creativity of the human mind.

"Really," he replied.

"So Lestrade isn't going after the murderer, he's after the gang itself," I mused.

"Hush, not so loud," John said quickly, a look of fear momentarily passing on his face. "This restaurant is their territory."

I immediately (and very quietly) apologized.

A moment later, we were visited by our waiter, a dark, handsome young man named Bino. After taking our order in to the cook, he sat down at the piano and started to play and sing popular Italian songs. At Santa Lucia I couldn't help but sing along. Bino noticed my attempts at musicality and insisted that I join him at the piano. With an apologetic look at John, I rose and joined my new musical friend at the back of the room. I love to sing, and too rarely get the chance, so this opportunity was not to be missed.

Bino asked me if I knew any opera. Well, to make a long story short, I did, and we played and I probably oversang the lovely O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi, and the tragic Donde lieta from La Boheme (bringing tears to my own eyes, if no one else's). We were just about to launch into Verdi's Caro nome when our lunch arrived. John looked noticeably relieved.

Between songs I had had a nice little conversation with the charming Bino, admitting to him that my brother and I were trying to find the person who had killed Signor Ratti, the man in the papers. Bino looked surprised, his dark eyes widening, but music crosses all divides, and he quietly admitted to me that neither he nor his family had any idea who had killed the gentleman. They were as mystified as the police.

When I sat down to eat at our little table, I faced down John's displeased look with a feminine lifting of my not unpleasant nose and an arch glance at him. As we ate, I softly told him what I had learned in my slight dalliance with the Italian waiter, and John's expression and mood improved somewhat.

"Why you little flirt!" he exclaimed good naturedly.

I looked appropriately ashamed, lowering my head, then smiled mischievously up at him. Then, I am ashamed to say, a jealous thought crossed my mind. "Well, at least I don't need Lestraaade to give me information," I drawled. I shouldn't be envious of John, but I confess that I was. I had been booted unceremoniously from the hallowed halls of Scotland Yard, when I had done so much to help.

Lestrade must avoid me on the street, for I had never seen him, except in the company of Mr. Holmes, or when I had sought him out myself in his own lair. And now here was John, all chummy with the inspector.

John looked up at me in surprise, but after a moment regained his composure and said, "At least I didn't have to act like a tart to get it."

"I - " I started to say, turning beet red.

"Come on, forget it. It is the way it is," he said, conciliatorily.

"I suppose," I replied, "but it's not a just world."

"No, it's not," he agreed, sighing, and we finished our meal in rather more amiable silence.

The next morning, John stood up from his breakfast, walked over to where I was sitting, munching absently on my raw oats and nuts, and showed me two newspaper articles, one stating that several members of the counterfeiting gang had been arrested, and one that furthered the story of dead Mr. Ratti, communicating the revelation that six salami sausages had been discovered in his kitchen cupboards, all containing rolled up bank notes. The police had concluded that he had not been blackmailed by the gang, he had in fact been working for them, and that his death must have been due to some disagreement within that organization.

When John showed these precious pieces of information to me, I looked up at him gratefully.

"By the way, thanks awfully for bringing me along yesterday. I'm sorry I was such a poor sport about Lestrade," I said.

He glanced casually at me and sat back down in his chair, saying, "Don't mention it."

Then it suddenly struck me. "But the police must be wrong!" I exclaimed. John looked up quizzically.

"You told me the bistro is owned by the counterfeiting gang, and Bino there told me that his family knew nothing of the murder!" I reasoned.

"Jane," John said good humoredly, "you can't believe everything you hear in a music salon."

"Hmmph," I replied, and settled down to mulling over this case, which I still believed to be unsolved.

Suddenly, from outside our front window, there was a long, agonized yowl. John and I peered out and saw Cassie's friend MarySue, stuck up a telegraph pole. She had probably climbed it to jump to our flowerbox, but had found the distance too great, and now could not climb down. She continued protesting her situation, occasionally tiring and mewing piteously, her mottled ginger and white fur twitching as she brushed up against metal fixtures and covered wires. Our hearts went out to our little former tormenter.

Fortunately, at that moment, John noticed one of Mr. Holmes' young Irregulars walking past.

"Hallooo, Billy," John called out. "A farthing if you get the cat down!"

"Roight!" Billy called back, in his colorful cockney. In a matter of seconds, MarySue was on the ground, scampering away, and a coin dropped into Billy's hand, with thanks and good wishes exchanged.

Poor MarySue, up a telegraph pole... That was it. Mr. Waters had found not one, but two bodies while up telegraph poles. Could he possibly have been involved in causing the crimes he discovered? I thought of the slim, nervous man and decided that to ascribe such outlandish behaviour to him would be a long shot. But, in my new theory's favor, he had been sleepless and flinching, and had not looked me in the eye, I now remembered.

My hypothesis was so unlikely that I saw John off to work without mentioning it to him. I wanted to find some proof before facing his likely skepticism.

As it was my day off, I determined to find and follow Mr. Waters about at work, to see if he did anything suspicious. I dressed very quietly, put on a modest hat with a veil (a woman's trusty disguise), gathered my medical bag (covered by a small carpet bag), and went to the Waters residence, ostensibly to check on my patient.

Mrs. Waters was home alone; she said that her husband was actually worse, but had gone to work that day anyway. I asked her where I might find him - she thought it oddly devoted of me, but told me anyway. He traversed a regular route on each day of the week, making what repairs were necessary along the way.

I found the miserable Mr. Waters, but did not approach him. I merely followed him from a distance, as he went about checking and fixing telegraph lines. I do not think he saw me.

At the end of a distressingly normal day, he did one suspicious thing. Having drifted to a less than desirable neighborhood, I saw him enter a small arms establishment. I quietly moved nearer to it, and casually paused as I walked by, peering sideways through the store window. I saw a greasy, poorly nourished clerk handing Mr. Waters a metal rod with a leather handle and strap at one end. I had seen such a thing once, and I believe Mr. Holmes had told me it was a blackjack.

I hurried past. Waters was buying a weapon!

A few stores down, I stopped, turned somewhat, and waited for my now-suspicious patient to emerge. He did so cautiously, self-consciously - almost ashamedly, in retrospect. Mr. Waters then turned his steps back toward a working class neighborhood where he had done some tinkering earlier that afternoon. He walked down the street and stopped, looking this way and that, in front of a run-down, vacant row house. I tried to hide by darting behind a wagon, possibly unsuccessfully.

He then went around the group of homes to the service alley behind them, with me still tailing him as best I could. He entered a gate into a back garden, the garden, I thought, of the house in front of which he had just paused. I waited, breathless and too excited to feel my exhaustion. I nervously tucked my straying reddish brown hair back under my hat.

After a few moments, he emerged and walked toward me. I darted behind a shed until he had passed, and trailed behind the now haggard, deflated-looking man as he made his way home in the gathering dusk.

"John, John, I've found something," I cried, bursting into our apartment, disheveled and dusty.

"Just where have you been?" he demanded, a worried and cross look on his face.

"Oh, I've found the most exciting thing," the words tumbled out of my mouth, thoughtlessly oblivious to his concern. "He's guilty, I've proven it!"

"What, have you? Sit down and compose yourself," John ordered. I tiredly fell into a seat, breathing heavily from my race up the stairs.

"Have some tea," he said resignedly. I slurped like the Ancient Mariner in a sudden rainstorm.

When my desperate thirst for both tea and air was slaked, I told him about Mr. Waters, the weapon, and the vacant house. He looked surprised and thoughtful. After our small conflict the day before, I didn't want to be too boastful, but I admit to being quite proud of myself.

"He must have clubbed Mr. Ratti for the continued notoriety - poor choice of victim, if the gang ever finds out," John murmured.

"And it looks like he is going to do it again," I breathed.

After a quiet moment, my brother said, "Jane, you know we're going to have to take this to Scotland Yard."

"I supposed," I grumbled, secretly feeling a bit relieved.

John got up and began to put on his summer overcoat.

"What, now?" I looked up in surprise.

"We must 'strike while the iron is hot,' as our friend used to say," he replied.

"Oh my goodness, you detectives work hard," I acceded wearily, pulling my cloak back on.

We headed over to Scotland Yard, where Lestrade was just finishing his shift - he also looked somewhat weary as John quickly explained what I had discovered, and the immanent likelihood of another murder.

John and the Inspector settled down in Lestrade's office for some intense strategizing, myself following along, tolerated for the moment. They decided upon a group of men to hide in and around the house, waiting to spring upon Waters and his victim just when he seemed about to strike.

"And last, but not least, Miss Jane will go home," finished the Inspector. I protested, as the sympathetic reader can well imagine, but to no avail. Lickety split, and still in a shocked state, I found myself arriving home alone in a carriage. It took me a few minutes to recover myself. When I did, I stubbornly developed a crisis plan - after all, being left out of the exciting conclusion to one's own story is a crisis. Then I went upstairs and collected my veiled hat and my medical-bag-disguised-as-a-carpet-bag. I was still wearing the drab colors and plain fabrics of the afternoon; I merely added to it a dark cloak, as the evening was turning a bit chilly.

I found a carriage to take me near the vacant house, but not too near. Nervously, for this was not the best place for a woman alone at night, I walked to the same alley and down it to the back gate of the second row house from the intended locale. I recognized the shed that had sheltered me earlier. I hoped any of the watching police would think I was a resident, returning home for the night.

I crept along the inside of the back garden fence, and then along the side near the vacant house. I hoped to find a hole big enough to crawl through. Fortunately, there was a loose board that moved with relatively little protest, although I snagged my clothing.

Again I crept along the side fence, to the back, and across to the other side, to the fence adjoining the fateful property. Then I searched for a knot-hole through which to peer, and, having found one, settled myself down to wait. John and the police were no doubt already ensconced in and around the house, though I saw no one.

The evening couldn't have been more lovely - although with no moon yet, it was a bit dark for my nervous state. I found myself calmed, however, by the heady fragrance of the grass, bushes, and flowers growing all around me. The quiet of this little oasis in the city enveloped me in its ambience. Crickets chirped; the sounds of the street grew quieter and seemingly more distant.

I was extremely tempted to drop off to sleep; but at just the moment my consciousness began to slip, I heard a slight creak at the back gate next door. I could just make out a man walking up the back path - he was slim and moved jerkily - it was Waters! Surprisingly, he was alone.

He walked into the run-down house, the back door squeaking a bit on its hinges. I wondered if the deed was already done, and we were too late. Maybe the police were already gone, having been unable to prevent the intended assault.

A moment later I heard a bang! from an upstairs room. I jumped up, startled and afraid. I grabbed my bag, ran around the fence to the alley, and dashed into the yard next door, into the house, and up the stairs. I found myself jostling with two policemen who had just then materialized out of nowhere.

We burst into the front sitting room and I saw sad Mr. Waters, lying on his back on the floor, blood pouring out from a bullet wound in the side of his head. By his hand was a pistol. He must have shot himself. But why? I squirmed through the ring of men and knelt down next to him, feeling vainly for a pulse.

"Don't bother, he's dead," said John flatly. Then I looked up, noticing that John and the other men were staring, not at the body, but at me.

"Jane, what are you doing here?" John angrily asked. Calmly, now that he was obviously alright, I said "Oh, hello. I thought someone might need some medical attention."

"And you just happened to be passing by when you heard a shot," said Lestrade sourly.

"Er, yes," I cautiously agreed. I held the carpet bag out as some attempt at self-justification, looked at it, mentally said "oops," and pulled the black leather medical bag out of it, displaying it for Lestrade to see. "You really should have medical equipment with you on forays of this sort," I even dared

to chide, although with somewhat trembling voice. Inspector Lestrade just sniffed and turned away.

Meanwhile, John had done with looking perplexedly and disapprovingly at me (he later said it did no good anyway), and had begun to go through Mr. Waters' pockets, gently moving aside the limp arms, to find some clue as to why he had changed his plans so suddenly. In his right jacket pocket, John found a small, handwritten note. He read aloud:

"To whom it may concern,

I didn't kill the first guy, but I killed Ratti. I told him on the street that I had seen a man's body in that house and he went with me. I thought he would say get the police, but he was nervy all right and jumped right in after me. That woman with the veil and the man were hanging around this neighbourhood to-day. They have been looking at me kind of suspicious and I guess the jig is up. I would hang anyhow, but I am all right now. It's all the return I can make for Ratti. If nobody hears the shot, I hope somebody finds me from a telegraph pole. - Josiah Waters"

After that, there was very little to be done. The body of my poor deranged patient was removed, and everyone went away. John didn't talk to me at all on the way home, he just looked sadly out the window of our carriage. I began to be distressed that I had grieved him.

I asked him if he knew who the man was that Mr. Waters had mentioned in his note, the other person who was following him. John didn't reply, he just kept gazing out into the darkness of the London night, a little breeze causing a tear to drift across his cheek. I decided to let the matter rest.

When we arrived home, Cassandra greeted us with a yawn and a stretch. She didn't care about the doings of the world, or about John's and my difficulties; she knew all would resolve itself in time. "Just feed me," her actions said.

The end.

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